There has been much debate about whether the 2015 election was the first social media election. With over half of people in the UK belonging to a social network (compared to just over a third in 2010), Carl Miller, research director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media notes that there were approximately 7 million tweets to politicians during the 10 weeks leading up to the election.
In addition, YouTube clips such as Russell Brand’s interview with Ed Miliband, despite being generally negatively received by the traditional media, received over a million views, and the Green Party’s video parody of a boy band of mainstream politicians was the nearest a party came to a viral success. Indeed, for a brief moment, younger (mostly female) Miliband followers set off a Twitter trend with their ‘Milifans’ grouping.
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